The past few years have seen a burgeoning of discoveries and revelations concerning environmental travesties, from illegal dumping of hazardous materials to oil spills, to decades old improper disposal of radioactive waste. Recently, facilities of the Department of Energy have been shown to have significant quantities of radioactive and hazardous wastes stored or buried on their premises. This has all led to great public awareness and concern over the long term effects of these actions, and to creating a political climate which is headed toward mandated remediation.
It is expected that the requirements for sampling and analysis of potentially contaminated soil and water will increase sharply as governmental agencies are required to devise and defend environmentally sound remediation programs. As an example, the Department of Energy currently is making between 2 and 3 million determinations per year. This figure is expected to grow to approximately 10 million determinations per year by 1995. At a current cost of about $300.00 per determination, the costs are becoming enormous, and represent a significant percentage of the DOE budget.
Due to the presence of radionuclides in much of the DOE waste, most commercial laboratories are not equipped to perform the required analytical processes. To perform this type of determination requires special facilities and a highly trained staff. Trained chemists with the requisite environmental chemistry experience are in short supply. These problems indicate that a chemistry vastly different from current practice is needed. The magnitude of the current problem dictates a production approach to its solution using technologies that will allow existing laboratories to operate continuously, instead of for only one-third of the day.
Solving these analysis problems is the mission of the current invention, as it is one component, known by the generic name of Standard Laboratory Module (SLM), in a system which will allow determination analyses to be performed continuously, with minimum operator involvement. A Standard Laboratory Module (SLM) refers to a self-contained assembly of components which will perform a subtask of a specific sample preparation method in a standardized modular fashion. Its function is basically to receive as input a bottle of a substance for extraction, to extract the substance, draw off a sample, filter out particulate matter, and deliver the liquid to be analyzed to an output container for transfer to the next module.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to present apparatus for the automated analysis of samples.
Additional objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.